juliet

So, hey, I'm 16 wks pregnant[0]! uon and I will, if all continues to go well, become parents sometime in early March or thereabouts. This is both exciting and somewhat terrifying, which I think is an entirely reasonable set of reactions to have to the upcoming reality of being responsible for a whole new human person.

The first scan was a couple of weeks ago & the foetus is looking fine in there. I kept going "holy shit there's actually a real life proto-human in there" (because what was I expecting, a puppy?); it still seems a little bizarre, tbh. The foetus woke up halfway through and waved its hands around at us which was, again, both awesome and terrifying.

( obligatory blurry photo behind cut )

I am mostly done feeling sick, now, except for when in a car (thankfully not likely to be a problem again)[1] or when I haven't eaten for a while (also not, as a rule, a big problem). There were a bad few weeks early on, though. I now await further exciting physical developments as my entire insides are reconfigured for my temporary internal guest. (Pregnancy is weird.)

In other news, in the last few weeks I have moved house; done quite a lot of painting, DIY, etc; had huge numbers of Competent Professionals through the house to fix boiler / do more painting / put floor down; spent a fortnight in Devon learning about permaculture, which was awesome & v v interesting but INCREDIBLY hard work; and spent a week in Aberdeen for my parents' ruby wedding anniversary, which was absolutely lovely. Now I really need to do some damn work, and also to get the house sorted properly before e.g. March. BTW anyone who has visited since we moved will be pleased to hear that as of today our sofa has finally migrated up to the living room, courtesy of some exceptionally buff & very professional chaps from a company called SofaAssist.


[0] 17 wks according to the scan, which is wrong. Let's hope I don't wind up going lots overdue.
[1] I reckon I spent more time in a car during my trip to Aberdeen than I have in about the last 2 years total. Possibly 3 years.

I was subjected to TV for the first time in about 5 months today (sat in hostel lounge, which has large TV which other ppl came to start watching). I was not particularly edified by this experience.

However, it did remind me that I've also been paying v little attention to any sort of news, since I left the UK. Whilst I have no intention of getting my news from the TV, now or probably ever (and the 10 min of TV news I saw today merely confirmed this bias), I'm not actually sure what a good source *is*.

Thus I turn to the internets. Where do you get your news from? Bearing in mind that I really want to spend as little time on this as is commensurate with being a reasonably well-informed citizen, and also that I am a cynical hippy-type who mistrusts the media in general[0].

TBH I'm far from sure that it's not better for my mental state to avoid the news altogether unless something is pushed on my awareness (e.g. via LJ/DW, or *really big* newspaper headlines, but see above re informed citizen.

I could of course rely on dogrando going DID YOU SEE over IM when he reads the Guardian alert email, but this seems like cheating.

[0] Ideally of course this would entail seeking out multiple sources & cross-referencing etc etc but see above re time, also IME this just ends up making me cross, especially if any of those sources are e.g. the Telegraph.